A Pressure-Based Fully-Coupled Flow Algorithm for the Control Volume Finite Element Method

Abstract

A pressure-based fully-coupled flow algorithm is developed for the control volume finite element method (CVFEM), which covers speeds up to the transonic regime. The CVFEM is used because it presents a number of advantages as compared to the popular cell-centered finite volume method (CCFVM), while retaining the properties of the finite volume method (FVM) in terms of flux conservation and numerical integration simplicity. The implementation presents a novel weak formulation of Dirichlet boundary conditions to resolve the disadvantages emerging from the strong formulation, by mimicking the methods followed in the CCFVM. Derivation and implementation details are presented, and a number of test cases are used to evaluate the accuracy and performance of this approach.